The number of Ukrainians who have faced fraud in any online shopping has increased from 22% to 45% since 2020, surpassing the residents of Bulgaria and Portugal, where this figure was 40%, the OLX Ukraine press service reported.
The relevant data were obtained during a study in five countries (Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Portugal), which was conducted by OLX Ukraine and OLX Group.
According to them, the highest rates of cyber fraud were recorded in Poland and Romania: in Poland, 50% of users faced phishing, and in Romania – 60%.
Residents of Romania (79%) were the most aware of fraud with fake websites (phishing against buyers and sellers). In Ukraine, this figure is 48%, and in Poland – 54%.
“Importantly, 76% of Ukrainians who faced phishing in 2021 did not lose money thanks to their attentiveness, knowledge of rules and timely contact to the site’s support service. In 2020, this figure was 14 percentage points less – 62% did not lose money,” OLX Ukraine said.
In addition, it is noted that, compared to a similar survey by OLX in 2020, the proportion of those who will contact the police has significantly decreased among Ukrainians. “However, after meeting with the swindler, the respondents of the listed EU countries and Ukraine behave the same way: the majority tries to solve the problem on their own, and only every tenth applies to the police or local authorities,” OLX said.
The study also revealed that both residents of Poland and Ukraine in the majority of cases received external links to dangerous sites in instant messengers: in Poland, 83% of respondents received malicious links in WhatsApp, while in Ukraine they received them on Viber – also 83% of all attacks. Only 6% of respondents in Ukraine and 18% in Poland received phishing links via SMS. Some 2% of respondents in Ukraine and 10% in Poland were attacked using spam mailing.
At the same time, 59% of users from Romania, Portugal and Bulgaria replied that they stopped the conversation after receiving a phishing link. In Poland, respondents know that they should not share payment information with strangers (79%) and open links from unfamiliar people (75%), and should only communicate on the OLX platform (69%).
“In general, according to the World Economic Forum, cyber threats have already been included in the top five risks for the global economy. Both in the EU and in Ukraine, the low level of trust and the relatively small number of calls to the police create a wide space for fraudulent activities. Now 40% of Ukrainians already know that links sent from strangers can be a fraudulent attack, so they do not open them and do not discuss financial issues in instant messengers. Some 15% of users found out about it thanks to our educational site Online Protection. At the same time, in Poland, 75% of users have such knowledge, and Ukrainians definitely have something to strive for in terms of personal cyber literacy,” Head of the business analytics department at OLX Ukraine Viktor Nobiuz said.
Online polls were conducted among 100,000 respondents in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Portugal.
